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THE TROUBLEWITH TWILIGHT

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

BY STEVE WOHLBERG

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End Time Delusions: The Rapture, theAntichrist, Israel and the End of the World

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DESTINY IMAGE PUBLISHERS


THE TROUBLEWITH TWILIGHT

Why Today’s Vampire Craze IsHazardous to Your Health

STEVE WOHLBERG


© Copyright 2010—Steve Wohlberg

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyrightlaws of the United States of America. This book may not becopied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit.The use ofshort quotations or occasional page copying for personal orgroup study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will begranted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripturequotations are from the New King James Version. Copyright© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. Allrights reserved. All emphasis within Scripture quotations isthe author’s own. Please note that Destiny Image’s publish-ing style capitalizes certain pronouns in Scripture that referto the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may differ fromsome publishers’ styles. Take note that the name satan andrelated names are not capitalized.We choose not to acknowl-edge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.

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DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to our two-year-olddaughter, Abigail Rose Wohlberg, whosesweet face and bright smile remind me of aheavenly innocence that humanity has lost,but which can be restored through our Sav-ior’s love.

Abby, Daddy loves you so much!



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Tal Brooke . . . . 11

Chapter 1 Twilight Fever . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Chapter 2 Out of the Coffin . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 3 Ancient Warnings . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter 4 The Blood Battle . . . . . . . . . 63

Chapter 5 Spooky Parallels . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter 6 Forbidden Fruit . . . . . . . . . . 85

Chapter 7 Occultism’s Bite . . . . . . . . . 119

Chapter 8 Heavenly Defense . . . . . . . 161

Chapter 9 No Greater Love . . . . . . . . 181



FOREWORD

Vampires have seized the public imag-ination in our twenty-first century

world, as never before, through such block-busters as The Twilight Saga, and many othermesmerizing novels, movies, and televisionshows.

Believe it or not, there is a hidden, super-natural evil beneath this obsession that thepublic is wholly ignorant of.

Steve Wohlberg—a kindred soul withme on today’s battlefront—is one of thesharpest culture watchers I know. When agenuine discerner sees a particularly potent

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deception looming on the horizon, some-thing that can do real harm, he springs intoaction, even when it is costly and unpopular.His concern is for truth, and for humanity,not for his own public appearance. Steve isone of these...a genuine discerner.

In the case of the present media feedingfrenzy over vampirism, both Steve and Ijumped into action at the same time toaddress this potent issue in our own ways.For my part, I wrote a long article in our“Spiritual Counterfeits Project Journal,”going back to my own childhood connec-tions with the occult. For Steve’s part, hewrote this book.

What opened the door for me as a childis precisely what we are seeing now, an occultobsession with horror and the dark side.

One of the attractions that the realm ofvampires, ghosts, and the supernatural heldfor me as a boy was that it was an attractive

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alternative to the bleak and boring material-istic naturalism of my parents, and of theirsophisticated peers.The drama of the super-natural promised something beyond “thisworld.” The prospect of late night horrorsand strange occurrences I found preferable tothe Formica-thin alternative of a soullessand flat reality devoid of mystery. No doubt,the hunger I felt paralleled what theestranged youth of today feel in their attrac-tion to the alternative world of Harry Potterand vampires. Surely there is more than what Isee around me, countless kids are thinking.Public school leaves them with depletedknowledge and nothing to believe in.

My early interest in the supernatural wasalso echoed by an observation made by G.K.Chesterton regarding the deep inner voidleft by atheism: “When people stop believingin God, they don’t believe in nothing—theybelieve in anything.”1

FOREWORD

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Look at the trail of crumbs. As a mem-ber of a rootless unchurched atheistic familyliving overseas, my occult curiosity was evergrowing, starting with horror comics beforeage nine, then a Ouija board at age ten. Bythirteen, I was reading Bram Stoker’s classic,Dracula, and I could not put it down.You betI was affected, all through my school years,my college years, and on to India where I wasfinally supernaturally rescued from a heavytoxic immersion into rank occultism.

Neither Steve nor I want you or yourchildren to follow my course.

I repeat: vampires have arrived in a virtu-al feeding frenzy of public obsession. SteveWohlberg is about to show you the hiddensource beneath this frenzy, and the down-ward voyage into the abyss that is waiting tosuck as many who will climb aboard.

As an alternative to the dismal darknessof vampires, a world that normally despises


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daylight, we offer you happiness and satisfy-ing immortality through knowing “the Saviorof the world” (1 John 4:14).How bright is Hislight!

He is Steve’s ultimate focus, and minetoo.

—Tal BrookePresident of Spiritual Counterfeits Project

Author of One World & Avatar of Night

ENDNOTE

1. G.K. Chesterton, “The Oracle of theDog” (1923).

FOREWORD

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Chapter 1

TWILIGHT FEVER

“I’m the world’s most dangerous predator.Everything about me invites you in. My voice,

my face, even my smell… I’m designed tokill… I wanted to kill you. I’ve never wanteda human’s blood so much in my life… Your

scent, it’s like a drug to me. You’re like my ownpersonal brand of heroin.” (Twilight)

So says the handsome vampire, EdwardCullen, to his star-struck 17-year-old

lover, Bella Swan, in the hit movie Twilight,now the rage of teenagers the world over.What is Twilight about anyway? Is it simply

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harmless entertainment, fantasy, and fiction,or does something sinister lurk behind thescenes?

You’re about to find out.

It all started one dark night—June 1,2003, to be exact—when a virtually unknownArizona stay-at-home mom named Stephe-nie Meyer had a strange dream. On her offi-cial Web site, Meyer testifies,

I woke up (on that June 2nd) from avery vivid dream. In my dream, twopeople were having an intense con-versation in a meadow in the woods.One of these people was just youraverage girl. The other person wasfantastically beautiful, sparkly, and avampire. They were discussing thedifficulties inherent in the facts thatA) they were falling in love witheach other while B) the vampire wasparticularly attracted to the scent ofher blood, and was having a difficult


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time restraining himself from killingher immediately.1

This unusual dream was so compellingthat when Meyer awoke “she wrote like awoman struck by lightning.”2 Perching herselfbefore her computer, she feverishly typed outwhat she had just “seen” in her dream. Basedon Meyer’s own report, the entire experiencehad a mysterious, almost supernatural quali-ty to it.After being obsessively driven to typepage after page, she later reflected:

All this time, Bella and Edwardwere, quite literally, voices in myhead. They simply wouldn’t shut up.I’d stay up as late as I could standtrying to get all the stuff in mymind typed out, and then crawl,exhausted, into bed…only to haveanother conversation start in myhead. I hated to lose anything byforgetting, so I’d get up and headback down to the computer.3

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Meyer admits that, at this point in herlife, she was a novice writer with no experi-ence in getting a book published. When theessential story, based on her dream, wasmostly completed, she did a Google searchto learn what to do next. Eventually, she sent15 copies of her manuscript to potentialinterests and, to her utter amazement, quick-ly landed a $750,000 contract with Little,Brown and Company Books for YoungReaders, one of the largest young adult pub-lishers in America. With increased drive,Meyer kept typing, typing, and typing untilher tantalizing 4-part sequence of fictitiousvampire romances was fully formed.

The entire series is called The TwilightSaga, and at this moment, it’s bigger thanHarry Potter. The titles of all four books are:

Twilight (Book One)New Moon (Book Two)Eclipse (Book Three)Breaking Dawn (Book Four)


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Because each novel shot off the press asan immediate bestseller (the first three satNumber 1 on the New York Times bestsellerlist for 137 weeks), Summit Entertainmenttook a chance and made Meyer’s first bookinto a movie, to test the waters. They didn’thave long to wait. During its opening week-end of November 21-23, 2008, Twilightgrossed $70.6 million after being viewed in3,419 cinema theaters across America, mostlyby teenage girls. Obviously, this was a bigscore. By April of 2009, the Twilight filmracked in nearly $380 million worldwide andover $127 million in DVD sales.Yet,Twilightfever had just begun. By the time you readthis,New Moon and Eclipse have already beenunleashed into theaters worldwide. BreakingDawn is pending. Chink…chink…chink.The dollars keep rolling in.

With translations into 38 languages sofar (as of November 2009), The TwilightSaga has garnered rave reviews:

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New York Times Editor’s Choice

Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

Amazon: “Best Book of the Decade…So Far”

Teen People “Hot List” Pick AmericanLibrary Association

“Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults”

and “TopTen Books for Reluctant Readers”

Needless to say, Stephenie Meyer (amarried Mormon with three sons) is nolonger your typical Arizona housewife. Cat-apulted to dizzying popularity and globalstardom, she’s been dubbed “the new queenof fantasy,”4 even rivaling Harry Potterauthor, J.K. Rowling. Meyer’s vampire-romance craze now includes midnightrelease parties, vampire proms, national Twi-light conferences, and Internet Web sitesboasting 100 million hits! As with Potterma-nia, sales of Twilight t-shirts, lunch boxes,


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posters, pens, buttons, shoes, mugs, drinks,and candy have gone through the roof.

Twilight has become the juggernaut ofthis generation.

As already noted, Twilight swirls entire-ly around an unusual romance between BellaSwan (a shy, normal teenage girl) andEdward Cullen, a 108-year-old vampirefrozen in a 17-year-old body. The setting isrural Forks,Washington (a real town), in thewestern part of the state. When Bella firstspied Edward sitting at a table inside thecafeteria of Forks High School (a realschool), she was irresistibly drawn to him.Astheir relationship develops, Bella discoversthat her unusual new boyfriend belongs to achic vampire family whose good-lookingmembers live, not in coffins, or in a creepyshack surrounded by bats and a moat, but ina splendidly built, vaulted ceiling, contempo-rary home. Yes, the Cullens are all vampires,but “good” ones.They’re vegetarians too, that

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is, they’ve renounced human blood (althoughthey are still tempted by its sight and scent)and subsist only on the blood of animals.

Vastly different from Bella Lugosi’sstereotypical creatures of the night, the Cul-lens walk around like normal folks duringdaylight hours, hold jobs, and can handlesome sunlight. Edward zips around in a sil-ver Volvo S60R. They’re expert baseballplayers, too. Fiercely loyal to their clan, theyoften act unselfishly, and above all, are tanta-lizingly supernatural. Edward reads minds,climbs trees faster than Spiderman, andexhibits superhuman strength that he oftenuses to protect Bella.

As the plot thickens, evil charactersemerge. There are not only good vampires,but nasty ones too, who mercilessly hunt forhuman blood, including Bella’s. Jacob Black,one of Bella’s friends, is a member of theQuileute Indian tribe (a real western Wash-ington tribe whose legends Meyer makes use


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of ).He, and other members of his tribe, turnout to be “shape-shifters” capable of assum-ing the form of wolves (werewolves). Asthrills build, blood flows. A coven of evilvampires slaughter humans, vampires battlevampires, werewolves kill vampires, were-wolves fight werewolves, and so forth, all inthe context of a Romeo-and-Juliet type oflove affair between a mortal teenager and herimmortal Prince Charming with sharp teeth.

In Breaking Dawn (Book Four), Bellafinally marries Edward, and they have adaughter named Renesemee; but becausegiving birth to a half-vampire half-humanbaby is so traumatic, Bella almost dies. Tosave her from death, Edward finally sinks histeeth into her (for the first time) and turnsher into a vampire to give her an immortalexistence, which is what Bella always wantedhim to do anyway. As the saga nears comple-tion, Renesemee is targeted, hunted, andnearly executed by the mysterious Volturi (a

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secret vampire police force dedicated to hid-ing the existence of vampires from humans)because they see her as a threat. After beingconvinced that she really isn’t, the Volturileave her alone, and the family finally settlesdown in the quiet town of Forks, Washing-ton, to live “happily ever after,” literally. Asvampires, they never die.

That’s Twilight in a nutshell. It’s a storyof love, lust, vampires, werewolves, good,evil, mortality, immortality, and blood; yesdefinitely, blood, and the craving for it asthe sweetest drink of all. If you’re a Twi-

lighter, hopefully you are thinking at thispoint,Fair enough…so what’s the problem? It’s

just fiction!

There’s a lot more to this subject thanmeets bloodshot eyes.


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TThhee FFiiccttiioonn EEffffeecctt

First of all, no fiction is just fiction, andthis is certainly true of Twilight. Fantasyaside, fiction still communicates ideas, val-ues, and messages, and these in turn, affectthe day-to-day activities of readers andmovie watchers. If you doubt this basic truth,simply read the first few paragraphs of thisDecember 2009 article from The CanadianPress:

TTwwiilliigghhtt ffrraanncchhiissee ttaakkeess bbiittee oouutt ooffbbrroonnzzeerr aass yyoouutthh ggeett gghhoossttllyy

28/12/2009 4:35:00 PM

Sonya Bell, THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — Love-struck fictionalteenagers Bella Swan and EdwardCullen have cast their pale, broodingspell over cosmetics customers acrossCanada.

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Retail stores are reporting a surge ofdemand for vampire-influencedmakeup on the heels of the popularTwilight series.

Jane McKay, a senior artist withMAC Cosmetics in Toronto, saysyounger customers bewitched by thepallid lovers aren't coming forbronzer anymore. They want lighterfoundation and pale powder. MACwill be launching a Pale 'n Dandytrend this spring to respond to thedemand.

"I definitely think (Twilight) iswhere it started," McKay says.

"They're really influenced. They're inlove with Bella, and they love thestory, and I think it's almost crossedover into their real lives."5

Get it? The Canadian Press has reported“a surge of demand for vampire-influenced


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makeup on the heels of the popular Twilightseries.” Teens are changing their powder pref-erences, and observers realize that Twilight “iswhere it started.” “They’re really influenced,”says the senior artist of MAC Cosmetics, not-ing that Twilight fever has “crossed over” intothe “real lives” of young people.

This is just one small example of TheFiction Effect. Yet the concerns of thisbook go far beyond “vampire-influencedmakeup” and “pale powder” to more sinisterways young people might be influenced;or to quote the Canadian Press article,“bewitched.”

Throughout The Twilight Saga, bothEdward and his family, and some werewolvestoo, are depicted as living absolutely awe-some, exciting lives. One of the “coolest”things (to readers) is that they all have spe-cial powers beyond average mortals. In ourreal world, it is this lure of power, and thepromise of it, that tempts real teenagers and

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adults today to explore the mysterious worldof occultism.

They’re doing it now, in record numbers.

TV series and Hollywood movies likeBewitched, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slay-er, The Craft, Practical Magic, and Harry Pot-ter have fueled interest in Wicca, magic,spells, and covens. Similarly, talk-to-the-dead productions like Medium, Ghost Whis-perer, White Noise, and The Sixth Sense havenot only generated hot interest in dialoguewith the deceased, but professional medi-ums like John Edward, James Van Praagh,Sylvia Browne, and Allison Dubois (all NewYork Times bestselling authors) claim realabilities to help their clients do it.

How about vampirism and drinking blood?Believe it or not, just as sorcery shows havefueled interest in Wicca, potions, and covens,and just like ghostly movies are motivatingmillions to seek interaction with deceasedrelatives, even so is The Twilight Saga spark-ing interest in real vampirism.


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That’s right, real vampirism. And Twi -light isn’t the only one. Shows like TrueBlood are doing it too—big time.

True Blood is a wildly popular HBO tel-evision series swirling around a passionaterelationship between an attractive blond bar-maid with telepathic powers (Sookie Stack-house) and Vampire Bill who—EdwardCullen style—has reformed his diet to syn-thetic blood. Then there’s The CW Televi-sion Network’s The Vampire Diaries with itslove affair between Elena, a gorgeousbrunette, and the tall, dark, handsome Ste-fan—another vampire. In both True Bloodand The Vampire Diaries, once again, the tra-ditional stereotype of dark creatures of mor-bid horror that subsist on human blood isgiven a facelift. The new vamps—Edward,Bill, and Stefan—aren’t bad guys at all.Instead, they’re often thoughtful, conscien-tious, and courageous. What’s more, they allhave thrilling love affairs with beautiful

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women totally enamored by their manly fea-tures and mysterious personalities.

Thus, Hollywood’s latest breed of guyswith fangs have become tantalizingly attrac-tive to real women who would love to sinktheir teeth into such a date. How awesome tohave a vampire boyfriend! many young ladiesfantasize. Guys are dreaming too, I’d love tobe a vampire myself!

You should be able to guess the next step.

Interest in real vampirism is exploding.

To this writer, such a trend is more seri-ous than cosmetic preferences. Although todiscerning observers, the trends of pale facesand interest in blood drinking seem to beconnected, like two fangs inside the mouthof one rattlesnake.

ENDNOTES

1. Stephenie Meyer, “The Story Behind Twi -light.” Retrieved December 12, 2009 from


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http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/Twilight.html.

2. Lev Grossman, “Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K.Rowling?” Time (April 24, 2008). RetrievedDecember 12, 2009, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734838,00.html.

3. Meyer, “The Story Behind Twilight.”

4. Grossman, “Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K.Rowling?”

5. Sonya Bell, “Twilight franchise takes bite outof bronzer as youth get ghostly,” The Cana -dian Press, December 28, 2009, fromhttp://inmovies.ca/Home/ContentPosting?news i t em id=023877825&f e edn ame=CP-ENTERTAINMENT&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=True&pagenumber=2.

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